Tag Archives: silkscreening

Twins. There’s always an evil one and one just trying to live her life and have a boyfriend who isn’t her brother, the dream-murderer. Sorry. Spoiler there, but this book is from 1992 and I guessed the killer within the first dream sequence. He’s no Freddy, let’s just be clear on that. Kerr the evil twin is pretty overdramatic and keeps trying to force his sister to ice skate. And not go to college. And never leave him.

Thaddeus never wanted Pammy to leave him either, but thankfully they weren’t twins so he didn’t have to haunt her dreams or make her think she was a murderer in an elaborately petty plan to make her stay. She never left him out of mutual respect and the confines of guinea pig housing instead.

This silkscreen is a Pickles parody of an artist whose work I very much enjoy – Steven Rhodes. He parodies 1970s children’s book covers and often brings in some evilly hilarious subversion, my kind of thing exactly. His version, the original, non-guinea pig parody version, called Pyrokinesis is available in many forms but I got my pin of it from the Creepy Co. of Chicago (love them so very dearly as well). I am not selling any of this silkscreen online, it will only ever be available from me in person and so there are two opportunities coming up to get a white version (very limited)…or…

A blinding purple version that didn’t scan very well! There’s also a Freddy Krueger-looking green one and some various blues. The ink really glows in person and it hurts my eyes. Come attempt to barter for one at SUPERCON in Fort Lauderdale or at the GeekCraft Expo in St. Louis both during July!

Seventeen of the eighteen “blind paintings” I finished. All of these will be available for an adorably low price at Wizard World Chicago, but they will also be wrapped up so no one knows which painting they’re getting. Drawing and painting eight animal and bird skulls in one weekend is not something I advise anyone to do, regardless of how much they used to like painting skulls.

All the printing for Chicago! I do think my Army of Dangers tea towel is my favorite of the five images I’ve printed on tea towels this year.

Postcard swag. After the reception my images received at Wizard World Madison, I wanted to make it more possible to take home my aesthetic and I’m pretty fond of postcards.

Some of the images on these are no longer available in any handmade format… all three Danger Crumples takes over for Christopher Pike paintings went to a good home. And the one of Danger with the white starburst behind him was solely a commission. But! Fear not, anyone who picked up my cute little Merricat with the Zebras record, turned it over looking for a price, and then had to ask me only to recoil in slight shock (I like that one too), I had both postcards made AND posters. The poster is bigger than the painting, but still looks sassy thanks to my friend Rebecca’s skills. Enjoy McWikken, Army of Dangers, Danger Dixon (not pictured, previously posted), and both Danger Who paintings (“) are also now available in full color posters – I didn’t get very many made, and of course, they are only purchasable in person from my booth at Wizard World Chicago August 18-19-20-21.

AND, to keep going yet longer, I also made several of my images available to be purchased on a variety of things via Redbubble . A link to my profile page is at the bottom of my blog, also on my About page, and I’ll have a more thorough post coming about my store in a few days so I can showcase all the products I think are particularly amusing. Here is a teaser photo –

The real reason I chose to put stuff up for sale on Redbubble besides being asked quite a few times if I sold online (I sell handmade things in person, non-handmade online), I can now get Merricat on a throw pillow. And Horace. And Pere. All the throw pillows! And I can get a guinea pig skull duvet cover, or Finny as the antichrist on a duvet cover, or the golden Danger Crumples (not pictured). It’s ridiculous. I could have the weirdest couch decor ever. So could you, gentle reader. So could you.

I love skulls. And bones. At one point I was tempted to call this blog Guinea Pigs, Books, and Skulls because those are the three things that I’m interested in artistically, but at that point I didn’t think I was going to feature my paintings on this blog- Ha.

The star painting of the most important mini-horse skull. I also have prints of my Bye Bye, Li’l Sebastian design.

My signature image, Guinea Pigs are for Life. Now one person can also have a guinea pig skull painting (I kept the first one I did) and about six people can have guinea pig skull prints – sometimes I don’t have very many available because printing is not always a sure thing when you do it all by hand.

This is what a Columbian Ground Squirrel’s skull looks like…when I paint it.

The skull of the other mammal I’m regularly associated with, the squirrel. I made its teeth less scary in this painting than the teeth featured in Night of the Squirrels.

So, this one time, in order to make things to sell at Wizard World Madison – my profile on the Wizard World site – I decided that I should do a massive amount of screen printing in one day and I deemed that day “Tea Towelpalooza,” the results of this lunacy are displayed below. I will be bringing all the successful prints I finished that day to Wizard World Madison on April 8-9-10, and as I am a big fan of unusual kitchen things (especially novelty tea towels, ever since I didn’t buy a Nick Cave tea towel the first time I ever saw one at a show in Manchester in 2005 – Never again will I refrain from buying a Nick Cave tea towel! No more regrets!), thirtyish of those successful prints are on tea towels.

This is the end of having available space in my living room until the prints dried.

That’s right, it’s Parks and Rec fan art tea towels. I do love a skull or a mini-horse, and this design I created has both; so, Bye bye, Li’l Sebastian, you’re 5000 candles in the wind and this is my tribute.

I hand painted in the red side of every pair of 3-D glasses. It was meticulous. I will never do it again. David Tennant is a major super awesome guest at Wizard World Madison, so I hope he enjoys my guinea pig parody of his turn as Doctor Who.

And here’s Danger Crumples in red and blue as Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor. Putting a fez on Danger was impossible to resist. He also has a bow tie.

The dissolving of the Danger Whos. I will only print these images once – some of them went badly and I had to re-paint my screen filler and print them again, but, there’s still a serious level of singularity in that these hand pulled prints and tea towels are going to be available at Wizard World Madison first and it may be the only time my hand pulled, hand packaged versions of them will be available. Also, I know it’s weird to see my human kitchen. I’m a person who displays a still packaged coffee cup for squirrels. I’m not going to open it and make them coffee, I barely know how to make coffee.

Two squirrels! Two robots! So appropriate for the second book of a trilogy.

The Guinea Pig-style (Duncan Hills) first edition of Night of the Squirrels: Day of the Robots, sequel to Dawn of the Interns and the middle section of the Squirrelpocalypse trilogy,was initially available on Amazon in May of 2013. Now, in June of 2015 (well, sort of May because it put it up in May, but there are always delays while I wait to see my cover and not a grey box on websites before I say anything), the “Call of the Merricat” second edition is available with its more squirrelpocalypse-appropriate cover and two less typos. I’ve been told it’s better than the first one – but! – I don’t think that matters unless you’ve read the first one, so maybe it’s an Evil Dead II situation and maybe it’s Gremlins II, there really aren’t enough horror comedies with sequels that remind me of my work, so it’s tough to be sure.

It’s also occurred to me lately that it might be interesting to show my work, at least in terms of how I create my clearly a-mah-zing squirrel covers. I do have a lot to say about cover art on here – that’s because I’m an artist. I use my human brain and hands to write my novels and also to draw and print the squirrel versions of their covers through the bewildering process of silkscreening. Silkscreening is the process of shoving ink through mesh to put images on things, in my case, card stock. In order for the ink to make the images I want it to, I hand paint the mesh of my screens with screen filler.

The dark red business is screen filler. Everything that’s covered with filler will remain the color of the card stock I’m printing on.

Many people can get their drawings onto their screens much more easily using photographic methods (light and photo emulsion). I can barely breathe most of the time because of my severe allergies and chemical fumes will destroy me very quickly, so I hand paint. It’s, um, not very easy to maintain the level of detail I want because I still only have human hands, but I do my best.

Pre-print Robots, post-print Interns, with discerning critic Danger Crumples. It is possible to remove the designs from screens, it’s called “reclaiming.” I am able to keep my designs on the screens by only washing out the ink when I’m done printing. Cold water takes out the ink, hot water is required to remove screen filler.

Once all the screen filler is dry and I’ve held it up to several light sources five million times to check for pinholes that will ruin my feelings while I print, I sort out the paper I want to use (I have to run a veritable shitload of prints when I silkscreen) and get the screen secured into the t-shirt press that hooks onto my coffee table. And then I print. On my knees. I ran this print sixty-one times.

Here’s my print-covered floor and the screen upright in the hinge clamps of my t-shirt press just before I went to wash the ink out of it.

I pretty much throw my prints everywhere there’s space because I need to run the print until the ink runs out, gets too dry, or some sort of blobbiness takes over. I had an ink-thickness issue this time, so I only ended up with twelve great prints and thirty-two mostly good ones. That’s a pretty good ratio considering I haven’t printed anything for over a year and my ink was definitely too thick for all the teeny details I wanted to come through.

Peregrine critiques my print from above.

I should mention that I’m leaving out a lot of details about the process of silkscreening, like tool names (squeegee!) and how you should have mylar on hand for proofing and registering your print and other things, so if you want to silkscreen in your living room you’ll need to research actual tutorials. I took silkscreening in college way back in 2003, and I didn’t put enough time into it, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t because of the chemical processes and my lack of allergy treatment at the time. I could have learned I have allergy-induced asthma earlier by passing out in a creepy basement room trying to coat my screen with emulsion, but at what cost? Actually, the cost would be these prints and all the others I’ve done since being able to re-visit silkscreening. Too much. It would be too much. And I retained a large amount of what I learned in that class over twelve years’ time, so…peaches. Of course, the guinea pigs would be much happier if I didn’t do so many things that take my attention away from them. A cost I must pay.

Horace and Danger Crumples don’t think I paid the cost to be the boss.

Anyway, that’s my cover creation process and if you want to support projects done completely by hand by someone who is nearly extinct because of their allergies or just want to know what happens next in my Squirrelpocalypse trilogy, I will list some linkage below and add to my “About” page. Oh, and since it’s YA Megamix Summer and my chapter titles tend to be song titles, here’s a sixtyish minute mixtape of chapter title songs to go with Day of the Robots:

P.S. One important thing, there are several “Rachel Smith”s writing and self-publishing. Accept no substitutes. It can be confusing. I have only published two novels so far, both are pretty clearly linked thanks to that new cover and the adoption of series specification (Night of the Squirrels/Squirrelpocalypse Trilogy) – even that other “Rachel Smith” who wrote an ebook about guinea pigs is not me. I would think that anyone could tell the difference between her writing voice and mine and her cover aesthetic and mine – I just wanted to make sure we’re all clear that she’s not me. And I haven’t written any books on shopping addiction either. Just YA fiction about the squirrelpocalypse thus far.

This is the new cover of Night of the Squirrels: Dawn of the Interns, the first book in my squirrelpocalypse trilogy. I made it myself via my handy printing and drawing abilities. It more appropriately represents the story and the trilogy theme. Here is the previous cover, featuring my beloved Pickles:

Inappropriate but most adorable almost-not rodent!

The Pickles cover is still on Good Reads (I like that color scheme damnit and that’s why I rated it five stars…I also like the other cover so I also rated it five stars, and yes, I am the only one who rated it five stars on goodreads, so maybe that was a silly thing to do…Rachel Shukert, one of my fave authors, did it too so I felt less shame). Anyway, I’m clearly attached to the Pickles cover but the squirrel cover represents the updates that I have made. I haven’t made any gigantic story changes, I did fix quite a few things and now there is more zazz. It’s fitter, happier, and more productive. Or something. It’s also been given a new blurb and appears in many more online purchasing venues, like the Apple store and Barnes and Noble. Humans (non-humans too) who have chosen to not use the Kindle store can now read about the squirrelpocalypse…Finally! I know everyone who reads this blog was worried about that. Very worried.

Also, I don’t want to jinx myself, so I will be as vague as possible… This may also be available so you can hold it in your hands someday, it is closer to being available than it was two weeks ago, anyway. Whee!

Here are links to the various purchase pages (they will also perpetually be available via my About page):

And, okay, full disclosure, I did rate it at five stars on itunes too. I got excited that it was on there. Plus I do think it’s good and fun to read, it’s been nearly four years since I wrote it and I technically started the idea in 1998 so I feel like it’s fine to five-star my entrance to the gateway to miscellaneous purchasing known as itunes.

I couldn’t see the cover yet on the Sony ebook store, but it should be forthcoming. It took B&N forever to put that two color work of majesticness up too.

So ends the shameless self-promotion. Or wait, no it doesn’t. The sequel will be going up (just on Amazon at first) towards the end of this month. It’s called Day of the Robots and it’s like Gremlins II meets Cabin Fever. The first one is like Cabin in the Woods meets Ginger Snaps, if only movie-related comparisons are available. They’re short and effective.

So, the last post I made mere seconds ago made me super sad. And then, I noticed that someone found my blog by searching for “adjectives for guinea pigs” and my mood changed slightly – cute didn’t instantaneously come to mind, searcher?

Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty cute. Belvedere knows how to sit.

The other adjective that comes to mind (beyond like fifty synonyms for “cute”) when I think of guinea pigs is: Demanding.

Yes, demanding is so much more than an adjective. I think it’s obvious that Mortemer wants something here.

Also, I wanted to mention that this week I screenprinted the new cover for Dawn of the Interns and I am super happy with it. I am quite fond of my Pickles model guinea pig cover , but it seems relevant to make a slightly more appropriate cover, since I have the skills. I would say I have the technology, but I’m a hand done art kind of person. My silkscreens are hand drawn, hand stenciled (no photo emulsion, it goes bad and might get on the carpet), and hand pulled – which often leads to tragedy. Twiglet, subject of the sadness inducing post and anchor pig forever in my heart, will of course be on the guinea pig version cover of the last book in the Night of the Squirrels trilogy. I haven’t written that one yet, but the new cover and the second volume in the trilogy, also with a guinea pig cover (featuring the beautiful Duncan) will be out in May.

“Snazzy” also comes to mind. Check out the Abyssinian moustache on Thaddeus. One could also use the adjectives: smart, fluffy, fuzzy, portly, or perfect to describe any number of guinea pigs.

A second jump into the murky seas of search terms. I mean into the fresh smelling forest of Douglas firs of search terms. I am trying to sound more winterish. There’s no snow, yet, in my area, but the bitter bleakness remains. I should change my voicemail to that “Hello, you’ve reached the winter of my discontent” thing from Reality Bites. Or I could listen to less doom metal while it’s totally cold and bleak outside. But it seems like the best time to listen to doom metal! And I just found out the singer dude from Finntroll (not doom metal at all) is cute and that made me nearly happy. Damn, I am rambling. I guess in this vein of trailing off I could mention that the purchase I’m happiest about lately is the game Cards Against Humanity. It’s free to download if you don’t feel like buying it. Damnit, Jerry!

7. Why are so many people looking for this? : son of rosemary incestuous

What kind of a world do we live in? Why can’t people just search for random incest? I mean, it’s on Game of Thrones, not just in these old tomes from the 1990s. Son of Rosemary…is the worst

I originally wanted that review to be only two words: Shit Sandwich. And I loved The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby so I felt really guilty about how much I hated Son of Rosemary. It just sucked so hard. And it’s hard to see good writers write shit sandwiches. That’s why Pammy is hiding.

I’ve never thought about having my pigs freeze dried or stuffed. Mostly because the idea of having their glares become lifeless and frozen in time is a little too much. Also, taxidermy has not progressed to the point where the adorable snout and ears of the guinea pig can be preserved exactly as they are, forever. I don’t think an ebook is going to help that.

Twiglet – Not meant for stuffing.

10. Not on my watch, son: guinea pig rat cross

I have heard terrifying tales of escaped hamsters mating with mice and producing offspring. I have never heard about that happening with guinea pigs and rats and I never want to hear about that happening. It just makes me think of the Fly. And the Fly II.

Thaddeus tells Pammy it will never happen. Just like he hopes his next bath will never happen.

11. Self-indulgent edition: captain sparkles

Next year, I will be putting up the sequel to Night of the Squirrels: Dawn of the Interns on Amazon. The sequel is called Day of the Robots. The character that I have nicknamed Captain Sparkles appears in both books and will also be included in the conclusion to the Night of the Squirrels trilogy: Night of the Squirrels. It is always darkest before the dawn. Anyway, I reviewed Nightlight , the Twilight parody book by the Harvard Lampoon people and utilized that nickname (which is also in my book in the spirit of Twilight parody, but there are no vampires in Night of the Squirrels, despite what that visiting Canadian writer decided in workshop, not bitter, there are also no particularly forlorn romances, just funny bad things happening, good grief this is a long aside) in the title of that review.

Pickles is on the cover because she’s a clue that the content is kind of unexpected in a variety of ways. And she’s so cute.

So I started a series of paintings and silkscreens about this very issue… I also had Ginny dolls as a child. It’s like this person is psychic. Anyway, the first time I included the concept was in a painting for Mr. Cheese that is somewhat visible in some of my photos – Thaddeus and Pammy take over for the Ghostfacers from Supernatural investigating the Murder House from American Horror Story. Danger Crumples is their intern, kicking the pink flamingo from the Electric Six song. It’s basically the only area you can see behind Ozymandias besides Belvedere being Ryan Gosling from Drive and the bottom of Pickles dressed up as Constance from AHS standing on the end of the Chevy from Drive Angry.

Are there ghosts behind this pumpkin? This chair is known to be haunted .